


got nothing to believe

by guiltylights



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Emotional Baggage, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Sylvain Jose Gautier Has Self-Worth Issues, because the Gautier family is A Mess!, it does however take place Post-Miklan, this story can take place pre-timeskip or post it doesn't matter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28304982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guiltylights/pseuds/guiltylights
Summary: Felix turns around. The torches that ring the training grounds cast low-flickering shadows across Felix’s face; it flushes Felix’s skin warm, shades his eyes to something brighter and more intense. Said eyes are pinning Sylvain down like an insect to a display case, leaving Sylvain feeling exposed and vulnerable. He’s fucking devastating to look at. Absolutely fatal to Sylvain’s emotional well-being.‘She didn’t. She didn’t mean anything,’ Sylvain adds.Felix’s frown deepens further. ‘And yet you did it anyway?’When Sylvain cheats, Felix’s reaction is not what he expects.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 6
Kudos: 45





	got nothing to believe

**Author's Note:**

> _[Time started: 23rd Dec 20, 8:35pm;— ]_
> 
> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Title taken from [this song.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYGQ3WGnOXI)

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When Sylvain looks up from the girl underneath him to his open doorway, he only sees Felix standing there with a blank expression.

The inside of his chest freezes over. Ignoring the girl’s confused and outraged _hey!,_ Sylvain all but scrambles after Felix as the swordsman turns neatly on his heel and begins briskly walking away.

‘Felix!’ Sylvain can hear how his voice sounds, high and desperate. It’s the most like himself he has felt this whole day. Like he’d been underwater and got dragged up out of the depths only at the sight of Felix’s face. ‘Wait, Felix—’

Felix actually stops. Sylvain, who isn’t expecting that, jerks to a stop as well, and then it’s just the two of them standing in the middle of the corridor, the distance between them consistent and consistently unconquerable. Sylvain’s stark naked. Thank the Goddess there’s no one else around in the dormitories.

He tries, ‘it’s not what it—’

That gets a reaction out of Felix. The line of his shoulders stiffens. But Felix still doesn’t turn around.

‘Don’t even try to say it’s not what it looks like.’

There’s fury in Felix’s voice, which is to be expected. Barely little under a month of being together, and already Sylvain has stabbed Felix in the back in one of the worst possible ways. Sylvain could almost drown in his well of self-loathing. But apart from anger, there’s something else in Felix’s voice too. Sylvain can’t pinpoint it. More spiteful than compassion, but less resentful than tolerance—Sylvain stares at the back of Felix’s head, notes the way the late afternoon sunlight shades Felix’s hair as he tries to guess at what expression Felix is making right now.

It feels like an eternity later when Felix finally glances over his shoulder to meet Sylvain’s eyes. The look on his face is like a soldier’s: impenetrable and disciplined. Sylvain can’t even begin to prise it apart.

Felix turns away again. He steps away; helplessly, like being tugged along by a string, Sylvain follows.

‘I’ll be at the training ground. Come find me later,’ Felix says.

‘Felix—'

Felix’s shoulders tense up reactively, and Sylvain sees the effort it takes for Felix to unclench his muscles, to uncoil his anger into something dormant and non-explosive. The sight of it is so unlike Felix, whose temper flares vicious even on his better days, that it quiets Sylvain down. Makes the excuses die on his lips. The silence between them hangs suspended as a wire.

Grudgingly, Felix admits, ‘I can’t stand to look at you right now.’

A chink in the armour. Abruptly Sylvain sees that the walls that have flown up in Felix’s eyes are not made of stone, but instead porous as water; Felix glances back only for another second before he breaks eye contact, and the movement of it feels like it tears some part of Sylvain’s skin off his flesh, unpeels memory and muscle from bone to let loose something fundamental to the air, never to be taken back. The quiet violence of it leaves Sylvain faltering where he stands. He can’t take anything more than this.

‘…Okay,’ Sylvain says, mutedly, and only watches as Felix walks away.

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In the years they grew up together, Miklan’s tormenting tactics had ranged from the physical to the psychological. Looking back on it later on, Sylvain would almost admire his brother’s tenacity, the sick obsession he had with ensuring Sylvain was never happy. Misreporting dinner time so Sylvain showed up half an hour late during a diplomat’s visit. Threatening to lock up Sylvain’s friends in their family’s terrifying cellar unless Sylvain agreed to stay down there by himself for four hours. Pushing Sylvain down cold dark wells and leaving him there.

For better or for worse, who Sylvain is as a person has been moulded by those early formative experiences. The person that you were as a child never really leaves you, just takes a different shape. Blind-eyed faith turns into single-minded stubbornness. Love sours into some sort of masochistic and twisted pride. Self-loathing spins into all sorts of different response mechanisms, depending on the day of the week—insincerity or pathological lying or self-destruction or rage, or even all of the above if Sylvain’s feeling particularly ambitious that day. There’s something to be said about Sylvain’s tendency to shoot himself repeatedly in the foot. It stands to reason that he was going to end up taking out somebody close to him eventually. 

Sylvain steps into the training grounds long after everybody else has gone to bed to find Felix doggedly running through his training exercises. There’s a training dummy set up in the middle of the lowered arena. Judging from the scuffs, Felix has been here a while. Sylvain approaches Felix cautiously. There’s nobody else around.

Felix doesn’t even look up. His attacks, however, do get pointedly more aggressive, and Sylvain looks on in silence as Felix runs through his final set of exercises. It takes Felix twenty minutes. If things had been good, Sylvain would’ve already cracked a joke or two by now, or help point out adjustments for Felix’s stance or footwork—and Felix, focused as he were, would have still taken the time to roll his eyes in Sylvain’s direction, or correct his posture accordingly. Felix had been more generous with his expressions ever since they’ve started dating. Seems like that vault’s locked up again now.

Felix does one last final move, and pulls back.

‘You’re here,’ he says. He doesn’t bother to wipe the sweat off his brow. Just keeps on standing in front of the training dummy, burning a hole staring into its shoulder as though he’s expecting it to get up and start dancing at any moment. Why not? More improbable things have happened. Their professor, Miklan dying, Sylvain falling in love, Sylvain breaking Felix’s heart.

‘You told me to come.’

‘Well.’ Felix turns to put his wooden practice sword away. Sylvain shadows his footsteps a safe distance behind. ‘That’s at least one request from me that you’ve honoured.’

The blow lands its hit exactly as intended. Sylvain can feel the blood rush to his head—his sense of shame and impulse to throw himself at Felix’s feet begging for forgiveness mixes with the pride and defensiveness that comes hardwired into the screwed-up Gautier family bloodline, that instinct that never lets them admit they are wrong even when they are because being wrong somehow meant being weak. For a second Sylvain can only stay rooted to the ground, at war within himself—but eventually the better part of him wins the fight, and Sylvain pushes himself forward, moves as if to grab onto Felix’s arm. He doesn’t, though.

‘Felix, I’m—I’m so, so sorry.’

Felix doesn’t move. ‘What happened after I left?’

‘I sent the girl away.’ Said girl had been, rightfully, pissed, but Sylvain suspects this particular information isn’t appropriate to bring up right now.

‘Tell me why you did it.’

Sylvain drops his arm, curls his hands into fists at his sides.

‘I don’t know. I just know I did.’

How to explain this ugliness that lurks inside himself, that sometimes leaks out of him from the empty cavity of where his heart should have been, leaving him senseless, self-removed and so afraid? Sometimes Sylvain thinks that a part of himself got left behind on the day Miklan had thrown him down that well—that if he visits the family estate and looks down into the well’s depths now he would still see himself, young and desperate and still somehow hopeful, paddling to keep himself up for air and scrabbling up the walls for a way out. Other times Sylvain thinks that he gained something that day, instead, passed a rite of passage into finally becoming a Gautier, because his family has only ever known how to be selfish and would naturally only teach that lesson to others the hard way. Being awful is embedded into his fucking soul. It’s everything he’s ever known. And some days Sylvain doesn’t know how to keep on fighting it, wonders if it’s even worth it to try.

Then Sylvain sees Felix, impatient and severe but nevertheless still waiting for him, and Sylvain remembers. Finds himself a reason to continue clawing up towards the light.

Felix turns around. The torches that ring the training grounds cast low-flickering shadows across Felix’s face; it flushes Felix’s skin warm, shades his eyes to something brighter and more intense. Said eyes are pinning Sylvain down like an insect to a display case, leaving Sylvain feeling exposed and vulnerable. He’s fucking devastating to look at. Absolutely fatal to Sylvain’s emotional well-being.

‘She didn’t. She didn’t mean anything,’ Sylvain adds.

Felix’s frown deepens further. ‘And yet you did it anyway?’

Sylvain is fucking this up. He has already fucked this up, how on earth is he still fucking this up. A voice that sounds viciously like Miklan’s laughs in the back of his mind, triumphant and vindictive. ‘I wasn’t thinking, Felix. I don’t know—I was just feeling shitty today and was wandering around town and that girl came up to me and I just—unconsciously, I just—’

Sylvain wants to offer up some sort of explanation, but the truth is that he doesn’t have one. If this had been any other person, Sylvain would’ve come up with a lie on the spot, spouted some nonsense about a misunderstanding and how he had been tricked or something, and then laid on some profoundly insincere declarations of loyalty and love just to round things off nice and easy. But it’s Felix. The only relationship Sylvain has ever been in that he’s actually thought was worth a damn, and if nothing else Sylvain thinks Felix deserves the truth. Ugly and unsalvageable as it may be.

‘I’m sorry,’ Sylvain adds, again, and only hopes that Felix can hear him clearly, hear the honesty and desperation that Sylvain is feeling in those two words.

Felix searches Sylvain’s expression. And he must find something worth believing in there, because some tension in his posture loosens. The lines in his face relax.

‘Are you going to do it again?’ The way Felix phrases it makes it sound like a question, but Sylvain knows it’s a warning more than anything else.

‘No,’ Sylvain is quick to respond. Even as he says it, though, the voice in the back of his head laughs: _really? Are you sure? You did it once. You’ve done it before. Of course you’re going to do it again._

_Shut up,_ Sylvain tells himself fiercely. So what if he’s done it before? He just won’t do it again. Granted, his track record is less than stellar, but that just means he’ll have to try harder. Maybe he’ll stop going into town. Visit the mess hall during the unpopulated hours. He figures he could rope Ingrid in to help him on his habit—after all, she’s been nagging him to quit his skirt-chasing for years. She would be more than happy to barricade him in his room and make sure he doesn’t get out on the days he’s feeling restless and hopeless and vindictively self-destructive. One of the few good things in his life is standing across from Sylvain, offering him a second chance, and Sylvain isn’t going to let it get away. Felix makes Sylvain want to become a better person.

Sylvain takes another step forward. ‘Are we okay?’ He dares to ask.

Felix huffs. ‘Don’t get ahead of yourself—I’m still mad at you.’ But he lets himself move in closer, lets himself get drawn in for a kiss. Sylvain steals one more just to make sure to himself that Felix is indeed, pliant and willing. He’s feeling curiously light-headed with relief at how everything went down. He’d come to the training grounds expecting the worst. A breakup, a beatdown, yelling. Something. But Felix seems to be fine, brushing his hair out of his eyes as he talks through their schedule for tomorrow.

Too fine. The fight was over before it’d even really begun. Felix is too relaxed, too readily at ease. Some awful part of Sylvain, the distrustful paranoid vengeful part of him, rears its head up, ready to strike.

‘Hey, Felix?’

Felix has already moved ahead, towards the training grounds doorway. He looks back. ‘What.’

‘How are you so relaxed about all of this?’

A myriad of emotions flit across Felix’s face, in that instance: bewilderment, comprehension, disbelief. Sylvain sees that last emotion settle itself into the lines of Felix’s body, the expression on his face—watches it the way one might witness the inevitable breakdown of a barricade. But in between the different shifting emotions, Sylvain catches the one he didn’t know he was looking for until he found it: guilt, and the realisation of what that means leaves Sylvain feeling chilled down to his bones. 

‘You expected this, didn’t you.’ Sylvain hears his own voice like he’s hearing it underwater. Flat and numb and wrung out of any emotion. ‘You’ve thought all along that I was going to do something like this.’

Felix snarls under his breath. It’s the most like himself he’s been the whole night, and the implications of that makes Sylvain want to throw up. Felix has always had the discipline of a soldier. But in order to be disciplined, in order to prepare yourself to be calm and rational against a threat, you had to know what you were going against. You had to anticipate what you thought was going to hurt.

‘Do you seriously want to do this?’ Felix asks.

‘Kind of, yeah. Tell me, Felix—have you always thought of me as a piece of shit?’

There’s no mistaking the fury on Felix’s face now. It’s a reactive sort of instinct, the kind that rears its head in Felix whenever he’s caught off guard.

‘You know that’s not what this is about,’ Felix says, his voice low.

‘Do I?’ Sylvain laughs, a little, and he steps forward just as Felix takes one step back, so that the distance between them still remains the same. ‘Maybe I would’ve known, yeah, before I realised that you also expected the worst out of me.’

It’s as if Miklan’s come back from the dead to wrap his hands around Sylvain’s throat and push his head underwater, singing victoriously in his ear, _I told you so, I told you so. Trash. Piece of shit. Nobody has ever thought anything else._ You would’ve thought Sylvain would be used to this by now. In the end, family always understood you the best.

Felix grits his teeth. There’s only two versions of Sylvain that Felix finds it difficult to keep his cool around: Sylvain being honest or Sylvain being mean, and right now he’s being both simultaneously.

‘Well, what else did I have to go off on?’ Felix finally bites out, defensive and venomous, jerking his chin forward as if daring Sylvain to continue making it hurt. Eyes glinting like fire-starters.

The blow lands clean. Sylvain can feel the weight of it punch through his chest. It hurts more than Sylvain thought it would. He guesses some part of him had still hoped Felix might deny it, come up with some other plausible reason for the almost docile way he’d reacted to Sylvain’s fuck-up. And Sylvain would’ve swallowed it, any of it: maybe Felix had sent the girl to test Sylvain. Maybe Felix had been looking for Sylvain already with plans to break up with him and Sylvain’s betrayal had just helped to seal the last nail in the resolute coffin. Hell, maybe Felix had cheated too. Any of these reasons, Sylvain would’ve accepted. Would’ve said, _alright, yeah, it’s fine. We’re even. Horrible together, right?_ But this? This hurts more than anything else Felix could’ve done. And what makes it worse is that Felix has never known how to be anything but honest.

Sylvain thinks back to earlier today, in the dorm corridors, recalls the feeling he had felt when Felix’s gaze met his, that sensation of being methodically gutted from the outside in. All this time he’d thought that had been his guilt talking, but turns out it had been his survival instinct. _Don’t do this,_ instead of _you shouldn’t have done this._ His body fucking warning him that he wouldn’t survive the fallout.

Sylvain runs a hand through his hair. ‘Well then, shit, Felix,’ he laughs, because he doesn’t know what else he can do. ‘Why are we together then? Did you enter a relationship with me thinking you were going to get nothing out of it?

‘What are we even doing here?’

Felix blinks. A flash of what looks like understanding crosses his face, but Sylvain can’t be sure anymore. He can’t recognise the Felix standing in front of him like a mirror, affirming all the worst things he has ever believed in himself as the person Sylvain loves the most.

Sylvain drops the hand from his hair.

‘Tell me, Felix,’ he says.

‘Did you let me love you while already thinking that I was going to let you down?’

The look of horror on Felix’s face is unbearable to look at.

‘Sylvain—’

Sylvain doesn’t stick around to hear the answer.

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**Author's Note:**

> Sorry that I literally have no resolution to this scene. Do they patch things up? Do they break up? God Only Knows
> 
> Thanks for reading! If you liked it leave comments/kudos, we writers always appreciate that :) I’ve also got [a tumblr](https://guilty-lights.tumblr.com/) if you wanna drop by and say hi. Anyway uh Merry Christmas sylvix nation
> 
> _[Time ended: 25th Dec 20, 11:11am;— ]_


End file.
